Why Sheung Wan Smells of Dried Seafood and What to Buy There

The dried seafood on Des Voeux Road West is not there because Sheung Wan is a fishing district. It is there because, from 1851, merchants from Guangzhou, Chaozhou, Fujian, Shandong and Shanghai set up trading houses on newly reclaimed land along the waterfront, dealing in goods that flowed "between south and north" — and the smell of that entrepôt trade never left.

This guide explains the history the government's heritage office records, which streets the government actually designates, what the shops sell, and the three things that go wrong for buyers: unit switching on price tags, food additives in loose goods, and endangered species rules at the airport. It does not name any shop, because no official source names a Sheung Wan dried seafood shop; the only businesses named are those the Consumer Council has publicly named elsewhere in the city.

Why the trade settled in Sheung Wan

The heritage office's Sheung Wan trail gives the origin precisely. "Bonham Strand was built when the stone beach along the waterfront in Sheung Wan was redeveloped in 1851." Merchants from Guangzhou, Chaozhou, Fujian, Shandong and Shanghai opened shops there dealing mainly in local products and groceries from China's provinces and Southeast Asia, and "because the goods flowed between south and north", they became known as Nam Pak Hong (南北行). Bonham Strand West was "also known as Nam Pak Hong Street".

The trade organised itself early. In 1868 merchants including Fung Ping-shan founded the Nam Pak Hong Union, later renamed the Nam Pak Hong Chamber of Commerce, which in 1920 "laid down a set of professional ethics for its members in the Nam Pak Hong Codes". The union hired watchmen to keep order and kept its own fire engine, acting in effect "as the fire station in the district". Its building was rebuilt in 1953 and finished the following year, then demolished and redeveloped again in 1997.

The district's colonial history begins a few streets away. The heritage office marks Possession Point in Sheung Wan as "where British soldiers landed in 1841 to claim Hong Kong", and describes Sheung Wan as "a traditional Chinese residential and commercial district at the northern coast of Hong Kong Island", with 35 historic buildings and sites on its route. The Ko Shing Theatre stood on Queen's Road West, "on the main road between Sheung Wan and the Western district", from 1890 until it was demolished in 1973.

Western Market is the building that ties the trade to the waterfront. It opened in 1844, "initially a very shabby market", on land leased from the government by merchants of Central and Sheung Wan. The North Block at 323 Des Voeux Road Central, red brick and granite, was built in 1906 on the former site of the Harbour Office, stopped operating as a market when the Sheung Wan Complex opened in 1989, and was declared a monument in 1990. It became a centre for traditional trades and arts in 1991 and was refurbished by the Urban Renewal Authority in 2003.

The three streets, and what each sells

The government's own naming is more precise than most maps. The Home Affairs Department's district guide defines three streets. Dried Seafood Street is the section of Des Voeux Road West between Queen Street and Centre Street, which it places in Sai Ying Pun, "the well-known trading centre for salted fish and other dried seafood". Ginseng and Bird's Nest Street is Bonham Strand West and Wing Lok Street. Herbal Medicine Street is Ko Shing Street.

The tourism board draws the lines differently. It groups Des Voeux Road West, Wing Lok Street and Bonham Strand West under Sheung Wan as "Dried Seafood Street and Tonic Food Street", "featuring shops that cater to culinary enthusiasts and traditional medicine practitioners". It lists what you will find: "Easily recognisable items like dried shrimps and scallops are abundant, but the variety extends to more exotic offerings such as dried squid, octopus and fish maw", along with "ginseng, dried berries and various roots".

Ko Shing Street has its own tourism board page, which calls it "the epicentre of wholesale Chinese medicinal products in Hong Kong". That page says the trade dates "back to the early 19th century", which sits awkwardly with the heritage office's dates of 1841 for the British landing and 1851 for the Bonham Strand reclamation; treat the tourism board's phrase as descriptive rather than historical. No official source explains why Ko Shing Street carries that name. The herbal tea drunk from those roots is a separate trade, decoded in the herbal tea counter guide.

The decoder below lists the goods official sources describe, with the Chinese name where the source gives one. No official source publishes prices, so the last column records how goods are sold and priced rather than a figure.

There is no official grading. No government source found sets a size or grade standard for conpoy, sea cucumber, fish maw or abalone, and the Consumer Council offers only qualitative guidance: buy specimens that are intact, firm, dry, brightly coloured and fragrant, and be wary of frozen sea cucumber soaked in soda to swell it. Its 2005 guide notes that real shark fin tears into shreds while fake fin turns paste-like when rubbed.

Catty, tael and mace: the pricing trap

Every serious problem on record at these shops comes down to the unit on the price tag. The Weights and Measures Ordinance (Cap. 68) fixes the Chinese units exactly: one catty (kan) is 0.604 789 82 kilograms, one tael (leung) is one sixteenth of a catty, and one mace (tsin) is one hundred-and-sixtieth of a catty. That makes a tael about 37.8 grams and a mace about 3.78 grams — the law does not print those derived figures, but the arithmetic is fixed.

The gaps between those units are the trap. A price per mace is ten times a price per tael for the same weight, a price per tael is sixteen times a price per catty, and a price per mace is 160 times a price per catty. Customs officers have documented each version. In 2014 staff at a ginseng and dried seafood shop in Tsim Sha Tsui hid whether a herb was priced per tael or per mace — "10 times what the consumer expected" — and ground the goods before revealing the price; officers seized 4.5 catties worth about HK$470,000. In 2015 a buyer who thought maca cost HK$490 per catty was charged HK$490 per piece, about 160 times more.

The misleading omission offence under the Trade Descriptions Ordinance (Cap. 362), in force since 19 July 2013, carries a maximum penalty of HK$500,000 and five years' imprisonment. Customs has arrested staff at "ginseng and dried seafood shops" repeatedly: in Tsim Sha Tsui in 2014, 2017 and 2019, in Yau Ma Tei in 2018, and in Causeway Bay in 2021, when a joint raid alleged prices "10 to 100 times different from what was expected". The only conviction with fines found in research was a Sham Shui Po shop and its manager fined HK$8,000 and HK$4,000 in August 2018 for a false description of Korean ginseng.

None of those enforcement cases was in Sheung Wan or on Des Voeux Road West. The recorded complaints cluster in the shopping districts used by tourists: the Consumer Council named three Nathan Road shops in 1999, whose prices were marked per tael while customers believed them per catty, and in September 2023 named four Chinese pharmacies in Causeway Bay, which drew 49 complaints involving HK$586,001 between January and August that year. Its complaint that year described "misleading pricing units, such as from catty to tael, and from tael to mace, resulting in a final bill 10 times or even 16 times".

The Consumer Council's September 2025 case shows how fast the numbers climb. A Singapore tourist quoted "$380 per tael" was billed per mace, HK$30,400 for 80 mace, and was offered a 70 per cent refund. The Council's advice is to "first confirm the pricing unit of measurement and price with the trader, as well as the unit of measurement on the scale. Further verify the total cost after weighing." The same weighing rules apply to live seafood, where the catty is the everyday unit, as set out in the Sam Shing Hui buy-and-cook guide.

Additives, labels and licences

Loose dried seafood is tested, and it sometimes fails. The Centre for Food Safety found 44 parts per million of sulphur dioxide in a loose dried shrimp sample from Tin Shui Wai in December 2018 and 72 ppm in another from the same area later that month, against a legal limit of 30 ppm. A dried conch sample from a Tai Po vendor in 2016 reached 700 ppm. The Preservatives in Food Regulation carries a maximum penalty of HK$50,000 and six months' imprisonment.

The practical advice is simple. The centre says sulphur dioxide is "water soluble, most of it can be removed through washing and cooking", and its New Year guidance is that "dried seafood and groceries should be soaked in water before cooking" and bought from "reliable shops with good hygiene conditions". Prepackaged dried shrimp must also declare sulphite on the label when it reaches 10 ppm or more; in 2022 the centre flagged a Hong Kong-packed sample that stayed under the limit but did not declare it.

Sea cucumber needs one health note. The Consumer Council's 2024 buying guide says sea cucumber has anticoagulant properties and that people taking blood thinners should consult a doctor. It also describes soaking as roughly seven steps over several days, and advises storing dried goods in sealed containers with desiccant.

Herbs sold alongside the seafood are licensed separately. Anyone who retails Chinese herbal medicines must first obtain a retailer licence from the Chinese Medicine Council, and a licensed trader must display the licence "at a prominent place in the business premises", where it carries a QR code you can check against the council's online list. That is the one official credential a shopper can verify on the spot.

What you can take home

Some of the most expensive items in these shops are controlled species, and the rules apply to tourists as much as traders. The Protection of Endangered Species of Animals and Plants Ordinance (Cap. 586) requires an advance licence to import, export, re-export or possess scheduled species "whether alive, dead, its parts or derivatives (including medicines)", and the agriculture and fisheries department states that it "applies to all parties, including traders, tourists and individuals". The maximum penalty is HK$10 million and ten years' imprisonment.

The list has grown recently. Mako sharks and the white and black teatfish sea cucumbers came under Hong Kong law from 30 April 2021. A 2023 order, effective 15 December 2023, added all requiem sharks and hammerhead sharks, and all sea cucumbers of the genus Thelenota; under the convention itself, requiem sharks took effect from 25 November 2023 and Thelenota from 25 May 2024. The department's own examples of controlled species include oceanic whitetip shark fin, seahorses, American ginseng, dendrobium, humphead wrasse and giant clams.

The decision table below applies those rules to what a visitor might buy. It covers Hong Kong's rules only; your destination's import rules are separate.

The 2015 case is the one that happened on this street. Between May and November that year the department inspected more than 450 dried seafood shops across Hong Kong, and at two dried seafood shops in Sheung Wan it seized 14 pieces of fish maw confirmed as totoaba and issued summonses. The penalty then was HK$5 million and two years, since raised.

Customs seizures show how the rules are enforced at the border. In November 2023 officers seized more than 450 kilograms of dried shark fin at the airport from a passenger arriving from Brazil, noting that smugglers "deliberately sourced dried shark fins that were yet to be regulated and mixed them with the scheduled ones". In March 2024 about 191 kilograms of suspected scheduled dried sea cucumber were found in a container from Myanmar. The department also licenses possession: a licence to possess costs HK$160 and normally takes two working days, but applies only to Appendix I species or live wild Appendix II species held commercially.

What this guide does not cover

No shop on Des Voeux Road West, Bonham Strand West, Wing Lok Street or Ko Shing Street is named, because no official source read names one. No prices appear, because none is published, and no official grading standard for conpoy, fish maw, sea cucumber or abalone exists to cite.

The penalty section of the Weights and Measures Ordinance could not be captured before the legislation site reloaded, and the text of the Trade Descriptions Ordinance and the endangered species exemption orders were read through agency summaries rather than the statute. The actual quantity limits for tourist souvenirs are not given; the department refers to two exemption orders that could not be read. Trade statistics on dried seafood imports and re-exports were not obtained.

Your destination's import rules are outside scope: this guide covers only what Hong Kong requires when you leave. No Antiquities Advisory Board assessment of any Nam Pak Hong shophouse was located, and the Home Affairs and tourism board pages disagree on whether the dried seafood street belongs to Sai Ying Pun or Sheung Wan; both are given above.